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geekhack Community => Other Geeky Stuff => Topic started by: quadibloc on Sun, 27 March 2022, 17:15:19
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Since we have retro keyboard lovers here, I thought I would address another piece of retro.
Just as Russia was one of the last places to make vacuum tubes, they were also one of the last places to make Nixie tubes. However, the whole point of a Nixie tube is to have good-looking numbers, and the Russians cheaped out by using an upside-down 2 in place of a 5. In any case, current events have made Russian products unavailable.
A web search on multilayer LCD displays turned up two-layer ones, used for 3-D images.
Since the kind of liquid crystal display used in a pocket calculator is cheap, though, I thought one could even have a 10-layer LCD.
Constructed like this:
One polarizer at the start, one analyzer at the end. Between that, eleven glass plates with ten areas of LCD liquid between them.
So instead of making numbers out of seven segments, or dots, you have one layer for each of the ten digits, fully-formed.
As in a real Nixie tube, the number is at a different depth depending on which digit it is.
The LCD could be of the transmission type, with an amber backlight, to further heighten the resemblance to a Nixie tube!
So a near-Nixie pocket calculator that wouldn't require more power than could be managed in a pocket device!
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Simplest method I've seen is laser etched panels with edge lighting.
BTW, Nixie tubes are not very long lived, that and price turned me off of them.
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Quantum Oled would be very nice for this application. Because the gamut can definitely give you the light purity required to get a neon_like glow. LCDs don't have the contrast necessary to look 3 dimensional, it'll look very flat no matter what, and it leaks too much light off axis.
Regular Oled is good too, but smaller gamut.
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I have a box of 100 small Nixie tubes in my sisters loft. I bought them to make some clocks and never finished that project. They are widely available though.
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They are widely available though.
Sort of.
A lot of the available ones are new old stock (dwindling) and all new production (of good ones at least) is done in Russia and Belarus... Good luck importing from either.
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Maybe my stash will increase in value ;) - I have had them for about 9 years.